Who should we believe, Berger or Tillis?

The day after officials with Continental Tire announced in early October that the company was rejecting a bid from North Carolina and building a new plant in South Carolina instead, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger was very clear about why North Carolina lost the facility. It was all Governor Perdue’s fault.

The story on WRAL.com included this quote from Berger’s press release.

We worked in good faith with the Perdue administration for six months to develop a responsible proposal to attract these jobs. We went to great lengths to reach an agreement, but we also had several serious concerns – including the governor’s plan that would line the pockets of her political supporters. Since August, we’ve tried to convince her administration that this deal reeked of cronyism – a fact they chose to ignore. Now, pay-to-play politics has cost our state more than 1,000 new jobs.

House Speaker Thom Tillis didn’t say much at the time about the loss of the plant. But at a town hall meeting in Robeson County Thursday Tillis said plenty about the episode and now it is clear that one of the Republican leaders is not telling the truth. Here’s how the Robesonian reported it.

Tillis also said that the state’s recent loss of Germany-headquartered Continental Tire to South Carolina was not the result of property ownership by a state senator and Democratic campaign donors, but instead the result of state legislators not being able to reach a “comfortable” agreement on the tire company’s demand for a $45 million cash incentive to be paid up front. The state had offered $45 million over 15 years.